Just when I thought we were good on traveling for a while Ray decides to take us to Houston for about a week to visit with our good O bud Marcos. The first night we met up with some of his buds at a dive bar. They had a set of pretty sweet doors.

Houston Trip

We also headed down south to Galveston Texas to check out the the disaster that Hurricane Ike left behind back in September. Galveston was still in shambles and it was quite obvious that she still had not yet recovered from being raped and pillaged. As a matter of fact, Marcos was our troubled hurricane victim that we kindly took in with our big hearts and open arms.

Aftermath of Hurricane Ike

Look at the sad trapped truck. From a full view you can see chunks that Hurricane Ike had riped straight out of the board walk.

Aftermath of Hurricane Ike

I really should of taken more photos but it was shocking and kinda depressing. But honestly, hurricane or not, Galveston was in dire need of a makeover so this was probably for the best. Galveston has so much potential to flourish and be totally rad as fuck. I mean seriously, it’s right on the coast. Not a lot of towns in Texas have that luxury, so they should live up to it and make it happen and I promise you the tourist will come by the boat loads, ready to dump trunk loads of money right in the heart of Galveston. Potential, so much potential. Well, like I said, it was depressing so we went to Buca De Peppo to grab a bit to eat.

Buca De Peppo

It was del-rish-ous! Probably the best Bucca De Peppo meal I’ve had yet and we didn’t even have dessert. Oh, we also invited Marcos’s room-mate. The muscle in the back row, and whimps in the front.

Bucca De Peppo

On the way home we got to witness Marcos’s car reach 8888 miles. What a historic moment for his Dodge Ram.

8888

Of course the highlight of our trip was our sweet VIP tour at Nasa. Yes, our very good friend, Marcos, whom is like a brother to me, works at Nasa. Have your people call my people and I’ll see if I could get you in.

Nasa is building a space tent, or maybe it’s a space garage, for a space-ship. All I can tell you is that it’s on a need to know basis and if your reading this you probably don’t need to know, carry on, carry on.

Nasa VIP Tour

Before I left for the moon I had to run a few test, make sure everything was working and all, just proper protocol.

Nasa VIP tour

And here we have a new space trampoline that’s in the making. Astronaunts like to jump into space when they are in space. It very invigorating.

Nasa VIP Tour

And directly next to it is the biggest swimming pool on the face of this earth, at least that’s what we’ve been told. But if you don’t believe me go watch Armageddon and go see for yourself. I talked to a lot of the real astronauts that were there during the filming of that movie and they all agree that Ben Affleck was a little bitch and cried like one too, especially during the whole under water training scene.

Nasa VIP Tour

The pool is 40 ft deep. It doesn’t look like it but it is and as you can see the water is super blue, but I promise you no food coloring was added to the pool for a more dramatic effect; the pool is just ridiculously filtered.

Nasa VIP Tour

Our tour guide, aka Marcos Jaramillo, and Ray in deep thought about the design of the space suit.

Nasa VIP Tour

I found a friend.

Nasa VIP Tour

And I like him.

Nasa VIP Tour

This is an acutal space suit that went to the moon, Neal’s I think.

Nasa VIP Suit

They even got suits for the Chinese.

Nasa VIP Tour

Tour guide and Ray still going over the design of the space suits.

Nasa VIP Tour

Control Room.

Nasa VIP Tour

If you’ve seen Applo 13 then this might look familiar to you. The red phone is used to order pizza during those long work shifts.

Nasa VIP Tour

The main reason that brought us out to Houston wasn’t Nasa, wasn’t Marcos, it was Soft Ball. Ray’s fantastic at base ball and he’s been itching to play for a while now. Marcos is on two soft ball teams that happen to be booked to play at the same time. He asked Ray to fill in for him in one of the games, assuming it would be okay and Ray quickly accepted the offer. Well as it turns out not everyone was okay with it and my husband wasn’t allowed to play. If you ask me it was a stupid mistake on their part and if Ray had played they probably wouldn’t have lost.

Houston Soft Ball Fields are Sweet

The next day we packed our bags and loaded up the rocket and shot back home to Austin Texas in 2.8 minutes flat.

In March of 2006 Ray and I moved to Oakland California from Vacaville. We had only lived in Vacaville for 3 months before we realized the commute was killing us. I would drop him off at work, drive back home and then drive back to the bay area and pick him up, a total of a 4 hour commute, without traffic each day. Anyhow, while looking for a place to live in the bay area we stumbled upon this building. It was an old warehouse that use to be a French Fry Factory. I would of never, ever, ever, even considered living in here, but Ray, well, lets just say he has more vision than I most do. At first I thought it was asinine, I mean have you guys seen the photo above? But I have always been one to just go with the flow, and Ray is what I like to call a hopeless visionary.

But you got to admit, it totally has potential. Even I could admit that. But again, did you see the photo above? It was taken through a hole in the front door. The building was 8000 sq ft. Uh, no that’s not a misprint, there was not an extra 0 put in by accident. Yes, we lived, worked, renovated, bled, sweat, cried and even threw a few parties in an 8000 sq ft building for an entire year. Crazy kids, I’m sure that’s what everyone was thinking.

The pile of trash we had hauled away almost reached the second floor.

It even had two walk in refrigerators, one of which I was planning on turning into my walk in closet.

We flew dad down because there was no way we could of done all this work without him.

We put a lot of work into this building. In the beginning it was scary, but I got over it and soon it was as though the Universe had answered our dreams, but with a little sacrifice and hard work on our part. Ray had always dreamed of renting out a huge warehouse that had a urinal from a rich old man that gave him a super cheap deal and turning it into his modern urban living dream. Yes, our warehouse even had a urinal. And I had always wanted to have my own massage business, with 4 rooms, one for myself and the other 3 I would hire or rent out to other massage therapist. The front of the building on the second floor had 4 rooms. The more we thought about it the more uncanny and perfect it seemed.

But soon, life just took a toll. Ray detested work and the more he saw his boss the more he loathed him. I was getting burnt out on massage. What once was filled with passion and energy fizzled and soon I felt like a well paid slave. Ray and I decided to call it quits and tackle yet another dream of mine, to live in Hawaii. Somehow, this dream seemed so much less painful and stressful. We had a 3 year lease so we took on the role as property managers and sublet the building for the remainder 2 years of our lease and for over twice what we paid, split the rent with Mel, the nice old man Ray dreamt to life, every month and started a new chapter of our lives in Oahu Hawaii.

Hawaii was a totally awesome experience. Every month we used the money we made from the building to pay off the debt we put into it. I’d like to say it was easy but it wasn’t. I can say it was a huge learning experience. This last trip to California was to find a way to come to an agreement with Kevin, the man we rented the building out to. He ended up subletting the building to Raphael, a total pathetic douche bag that couldn’t pay rent on time to save his life and couldn’t move out when asked to leave. But our main concern for coming out to Cali was to make sure we uphold our contract with Mel and leave on good terms with him. When we got to the building it was in shambles. All the hard work, blood, sweat, tears, and money we put into it seemed wasted. Did I mentioned that Raphael had secretly turned the building into an illegal club/bar he called the Radiance Factory. Just a word of advice for Raphael, it’s not smart to advertise an illegal club. Fucking retard.

Here’s a before us and after us photo.

And after then after we did more work and started to settled in. In the very back behind the glass windows is where where the 4 massage rooms laid.

From the opposite direction. Ray loved his pool table.

A closer look further back. To the left was our bed room, middle was Ray’s desk and to the far right was our closet.

A better view of our closet. I had a lot more shoes back then.

Our living room in it’s earlier stage.

The kitchen area and dining area. Ray and I built that wobbly table one night when we had nothing better to do. He swears one day he’ll redeem himself.

Here’s what the building looked like on our last visit.

Looks like they built a kitchen room.

We turned this room into my workout/yoga room.

This is what it looks like by the time we were done with it.

And this is how it looks now.

This was suppose to eventually be a massage room #4, but in the mean time we just made it a guest room and it was also Chris Miller’s room when he stayed with us.

And this is how it looks now.

A before and after of Massage Room #3.

Same room, present day.

Before and after of Massage Room #2.

Massage Room #2 today.

My Massage Room before.

My beautiful massage room after. I actually worked countless hours in this room. It was the perfect massage room.

And this is how it looks like now.

A few before and afters of the lobby we fixed up. We were planning on getting more furniture to fill it up but I think we did a pretty spectacular job.

And here it is today. Animals.

We took back our blinds.

A before and after of the mens restroom. Behind the wall next to the sink was where the men’s urinal was. I forgot to take an aftermath photo but it’s probably for the best because it was bad.

They badly built what looks like lounge rooms downstairs. But the whole are downstairs area was pretty muck a junk yard.

Oh, our mistletoe was still hanging up. I bet it launched a lot of kisses.

I’ll never forget the day we lifted the super industrial air condition unit up on the rooftop. It was insanely crazy and scary. We had to set it on top of a shit ton of pallets in order for Ray and his dad to reach it. Ray had originally wanted to tie the heavy unit to a rope and pull it up. That made no fucking sense to me so I walked over to the Chinese produce factory and asked if they would help us out with their fork lift. It took some per swaying but my charm won in the end.
There were more pallets than what you see here. Trust me, people came out of their buildings to watch. It was totally wobbly and insanely scary.

Oh course it wasn’t only us that sweat for this building,

we put our loved ones to work too.

Kola did a lot of supervising.

Of course it wasn’t all hard work. I miss our parties

Drinking wine on the rooftop.

Having friends over to play pool. Hell, I miss having friends.

I even miss the skaters.

It was definitely an experience. But I gotta tell ya, I’m so glad it’s over.